I'm still baffled every now and then about the US. That paid sick time is even a thing to discuss and that the workplace sets those rules is another of those moments.
Can anyone chime in in defense of this? Is there a side to this I'm not seeing?
Can anyone chime in in defense of this? Is there a side to this I'm not seeing?
The US is just anti-labor and in love with cheap consumables. Combined, we end up with a massive case of haves and have-nots. Vacation, sick leave, retirement accounts, medical care. It’s great if you’re rich (as damn near everybody on this forum is).
My brother in law is an auto mechanic here in the US. My uncle as well, but in Scotland. While they’re overall income is pretty close (solidly middle class) the amount of financial stress in the US is MUCH MUCH higher.
It’s so short-sighted. I’d happily pay another $30k/year or more in taxes for nationalized medical, lower college costs and other things most Europeans have.
The average household income in the US is around 80k. That’s like 55k after taxes. Are you proposing they give up another 30k of that?
And between college loans and medical insurance, I probably pay close to that already. And on the medical side, I’d rather it went to a national program that didn’t tightly couple people to their employers.
And then they pay that extra through costs for imprisonment, homelessness and other stuff. And for healthcare the US pays almost twice as much per capita than other countries. It’s just dumb.
Over the years, for better and worse, the interpretation of what powers the federal government are given had expanded dramatically. Even so, compelling paid sick leave at the federal level would need to rely on the interstate commerce clause.
I'm all for paid sick leave, personally, but doing it in a way that actually passes conditional muster and isn't overturned by a court isn't as easy as saying "this is a good thing, why don't we do it?"
[0] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/murder/is-murder-a-federal...
Why should the employer pay for work that isn't being done?
If you rent a car and it doesn't work, would you pay for it?
If you rent an apartment and its unfit for habitation, would you pay for it?
If you go to the store to buy a product and it's not there, would you pay for it?
It's different if the illness is work related, of course. And it's beneficial to society if people can be sick without worrying about losing income, but is that enough to make employers pay for it? And it also doesn't seem like equal pay for equal work if worker A is sick 2 days a year and worker B is sick 20 days a year, they do about the same amount of work on days they attend and get paid the same amount anually.
- Taking a business risk doesn’t leave you destitute.
- Getting unlucky due to health/climate/career doesn’t leave you on the streets.
You can either pay for such equality of outcome programs in taxes or by workplace policies. Provided the policy is economically reasonable and all employers are obliged to it - taxes or policy don’t matter much.
And there is already unemployment insurance. Whether it is enough and the fact that it doesn’t cover contract workers is a different issue.
Risks are good for society, we have buffer to absorb them provided you aren’t betting the farm with BoA. In which case, we really should have tighter regulations to stop people from betting the farm with BoA.
So if the people, through the government, decree that an employer needs to pay for sick days, then that's how it would work.
After all, the company exists through the combined effort of citizens of the government! and the company trades in money that is issued by the government, and managed by the government through taxes.
Of course there's no reason the employer should have to pay directly. Why not have some sort of government program to cover people's illnesses? Or a new form of insurance? In the end, the public health improvement would be the same.
We can postulate all sorts of modern scenarios and ethics and laws and rights on top of that, but at the end of the day, if you want to have a society, everyone in it needs to be taken care of according to their own needs. Leave too many people behind and there will be upheaval.
Alternately, we could not have a society, but then there are no business owners in that scenario.
The rental car company has a fleet of cars, and they will put you in one that works. It happens, cars have many moving parts and they are known to break down - the rental company knows this and will replace the car in almost all cases. Nobody is paying for something that doesn't work, but the rental company pays to get the broken car fixed, which is part of their cost of doing business.
>If you rent an apartment and its unfit for habitation, would you pay for it?
There are laws about that, for very good reason. Nobody is forcing anyone to live in squalor, though it sometimes comes down to poor people not having money and living in bad situations. People absolutely can and have sued bad landlords, and the city steps in if the people speak up. I know I've had to get the city called out to address a situation before, and the landlord paid to make it right.
>If you go to the store to buy a product and it's not there, would you pay for it?
Come on now, this is getting ridiculous. This is a non-issue. If you pay for a product and don't receive it, then that's fraud and at worst you can sue to get your money back. Usually you just get your money back.
>Why should the employer pay for work that isn't being done?
This is much like the rental car in that the employer has to pay to keep the employees healthy. They employ people to do the work, and they need to be hired, on-boarded, trained, and gain experience in the role. People aren't like cars and can't be replaced as easily. The employer should understand this and much like the rental car company keeps a fleet of cars, the employer with more than 1 employee has them for continuity of business, and paying them while sick is part of what ensures they won't need to seek a different job that will pay them while sick. It helps retain a trained and dedicated worker. It's the cost of doing business. Or, the business can suffer and be understaffed because the employer didn't account for humans ever getting sick (which humans are known to do pretty often), so if the business wants to cut corners and not pay people, then they will end up being understaffed and their business will suffer. This is really basic business stuff.
My sister is a physical therapist. She has a doctorate. Her work fundamentally involves being close to other people and touching them. This is one of those fields that 10-20 years ago everybody said would be booming and highly lucrative. Her sick time is counted against her vacation time.
We live in a country completely captured by corporations.
If I can sit up in a chair, I log in and stay near my computer to attend meetings and answer emails.
Even then, the majority of my time goes to being sick.
In either of those cases, I would be scheduling a 1-on-1 with whoever is closest to being able to change that policy, in the smallest meeting room I can find, sitting right next to them, and then letting whatever symptoms of my illness take over. Gastric problems causing diarrhea or vomit? Congrats, I'm going to either literally poop in your lap, or vomit in your face. I'm coughing up phlegm? Sorry, here's a towel to wipe off your face. Something's bleeding? You might want to go get yourself tested for STDs and whatnot, gods know what depths I've been plumbing in my spare time. Severe pain such that I can barely sit? Your face looks nice and squishy to use as a stress ball.
They'll just turn down the meeting request, tell your supervisor what you've done and you'll suffer either real punishment or be unofficially 'punished'. You may even be fired because of "at-will" employment: Anyone can be fired for (almost) any reason at any time.
Generally you just don't get time off, or maybe you can take the time off without pay (if they're extra generous). Such is life in the USA, there is no response: You will do what the owners of capital say, or you will go hungry.
That's all there is to it.
Well, I'm not scheduling a 1-on-1 to discuss shitting in their lap. I'll dangle some kind of carrot they can't help but go for.
Sure, after, I will probably lose my job, that's understandable; We're well past the point of civility then anyhow -- after all, we're contemplating shitting in someone's lap or bleeding onto them to potentially pass blood-borne diseases to them.
> Generally you just don't get time off, or maybe you can take the time off without pay (if they're extra generous). Such is life in the USA, there is no response: You will do what the owners of capital say, or you will go hungry.
I'm well aware, as per your opening question -- I do live in the US. What I'm trying to get at is that it's long past time to be despondent about this. It's time to be angry. It's time to shit in _someones_ lap.
Of course this relies on being paid enough to be able to forgo some earnings, and not being financialized so hard such that a paycheck has been spent before it's even earned. So it can't scale in popularity due to the economic feedback loop designed to keep real wages low, and the financial system primarily based on debt.
Proposed bans on tipping actually went through the courts, with some southern states ruling to ban it. Eventually, the supreme court stepped in, and ensured tipping would be legal.
Anyway, modern labor laws evolved from that mess, so it's not surprising at all that paid time off is discretionary in some states.
For example, last Thursday the Supreme Court just ruled that unions can be sued for losses caused by striking https://archive.is/0bYhe
But that is just the last pieces of labor's power getting washed away in the USA. Already things like sympathy strikes, which give labor actual power in Europe, are completely illegal.
Instead, the employer contended in a lawsuit, “the drivers prompted the creation of the perishable product” and then waited until the concrete was inside the trucks before walking off the job.
The bar being set is intentionality in destroying property even through spoilage by setting up a situation to cause the spoilage intentionally. It’s a fairly minor erosion if it is at all.
The decision was 8-1.
Everyone seems to miss that the Court did not rule on the merits of the case. They rules on a procedural question. They ruled that the suit can go forward because intentional damage was within the realm of possibility.
Jackson dissented because she believed that NLRB has priority jurisdiction before other lawsuit venues.
No one on HN knows who is "right".